Newspapers covered Wilson’s autograph hunting mission to meet Ference Puskas, then the world’s greatest player
Les Wilson was a young Vancouver soccer fanatic who snuck off to the airport to snaffle the autographs of Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas. As a 16-year-old he was invited by the legendary Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Stanley Cullis to train with his touring team in Stanley Park, Vancouver and was given a Wolves kit as a keepsake.
A year later he paid his passage to England to have trials with Wolves and was signed on as a professional. Fitteen months later he had made his debut in the old Second Division (now the Championship). He played eight seasons with the club, most of them in the First Division as the EPL was then called.
Les returned to Cascadia to help build the game in his home town. He joined the Vancouver Whitecaps in 1974 as a player and went on to be part of the coaching staff as well as the team’s administrator.
Les was an integral part of the organization that lifted the 1979 NASL Soccer Bowl.
After nine years with the Whitecaps, he joined the Canadian Soccer Association as national teams Manager/ Administrator, all the way to the 1986 World Cup finals where they met France, Hungary and the USSR.
Les was inducted to the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame and Museum in Ontario, Canada.
This is his story.
Les Wilson: Canadian; Cascadian; Soccer Pioneer
Part One
By Charlie Bamforth
The football world has never been more globally integrated. Take, for instance, the top echelon of the English game. The first team squads of most Premiership clubs have rather more non-British players than “home grown” ones. Even in their development programs there are a goodly number of ‘imported’ youngsters.
Such was not the case a half century ago, where the employment of non-English players was for the most part a minority situation, with that subgroup traveling no further than from Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
The exceptions were relatively few, notably various South Africans such as Eddie Stuart, Eddie Firmani and Bill Perry. When it came to North American players, one man stood out from the rest as being the advance guard who plowed the way for all those fine players that have traversed the pond subsequently to find fame and fortune in the top stratum of the English game. And in his case it was not for any fortune, other than the privilege of gracing the two top divisions of English soccer for almost a decade. He turned out to be one of the most versatile players ever to pull on the jersey of a professional footballer.
To be strictly accurate, Les Wilson was born in Manchester, but it was when he was at a very tender age (seven in 1954) that the household pulled up roots and moved to Vancouver, Canada.
A young Les with the Ed Bayley Memorial Trophy
His father, Les Wilson senior, became a project manager intimately involved in the planning and building of many regional landmarks, including the Royal Bank Centre, Vancouver Airport, Post Office, Pan Pacific and Five Sails. Les junior was very distinctly raised Canadian.
Although a bright scholar, his love of sport generally occupied a lot of his energies throughout his upbringing. In 1957-1958 he was skipper of the Carlton Elementary School soccer team and he would go on to captain the Killarney High School Intermediate side. If anything he attracted even more honors in athletics and boxing.
“To be honest my grades were not quite as high as they could have been because I was paying so much attention to my running.
“I was part of the Vancouver Olympic Club alongside some of the best athletes in the world.
“Lloyd Swindells was the coach – he went on to coach the Canadian team at the Olympics in 1968, 1972 and 1976. He was keen that I go off to a meeting in Eugene and believed that I could get a scholarship to the University of Oregon”.
It was football, though, that took Les Wilson on a different track. As a youth he showed local promise, winning the Ed Bayley Memorial Trophy for being the top youth soccer player in the semi-pro Pacific Coast Soccer League in British Columbia with the Westminster Royals. That, as Wilson explained, let to inclusion in a select representing the League despite his youth.
“In the summer of 1963 I was part of a Pacific Coast Soccer League representative team. They were mostly grown men from Britain, Italy and other places. I was just 16. After this particular game our manager, Jack Spry, said ‘there are two gentlemen who would like to meet you’. They were Stan Cullis, the Wolverhampton Wanderers manager, and his right hand man, Joe Gardiner.
“They told me that they were training the next day at Brockton Oval in Stanley Park and would I like to go along.
“What a wonderful opportunity: training alongside the likes of Peter Knowles, Ken Knighton, Terry Wharton, John Galley. Fred Goodwin in particular seemed to take a shine to me.
“Mr. Cullis asked if I would like to go over to Wolverhampton for trials and I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my parents. They weren’t as excited as I was, reminding me that a footballer’s life could be a very short one, not necessarily well paid, and that there is no substitute for a proper education.
“Despite what they said, I was adamant that I was going to head over to England that summer for my trial. I had the money: I played for Westminster Royals and got some cash for that and their owner, one of the richest men in Canada, employed me in the school holidays. I was earning a man’s wage.
“So I took a number 19 bus down to the Air Canada Center, determined to buy myself a plane ticket to England. Upon being asked for my passport and for my age I was sent packing back home! I had to settle for delaying the trial to 1964.
“I stepped up my training and continued to play well, so much so that I was selected in the Vancouver All Star squad for games against the English champions Liverpool and the Yugoslav top team Red Star Belgrade in the summer of 1964. I went on as a substitute in both of them and scored in the second game at Empire Stadium.
The performances impressed enough to see Wilson heading for England.
“In no time I was flying off on my dollar to have my trials with a club that I consider one of the five best in the history of British football. I arrived in Manchester and my Uncle Frank drove me down to Molineux, where I was shown the pitch and the trophy room.
“Joe Gardiner then took me to my digs, which were on New Hampton Road, with my roommate being Peter Knowles. On my second day the players were all ferried up to Cannock Chase for a morning’s pre-season running on tough terrain. Now in that squad were some very fit players, led by England fullback Bobby Thomson, behind whom only marginally were David Woodfield, Freddie Goodwin and Peter Knowles.
“It was 3 to 4 miles over 3 laps. At the end of the first lap I was shoulder to shoulder with Bobby. I can hear Joe Gardiner now: ‘Yank, you’ll never finish this’. I wasn’t sure about being called a ‘Yank’ but I carried on undaunted. At the end of the second lap, Joe shouted out ‘Wilson, you’re doing well but you’ll never finish’.
“In the end I won by 30 yards over Bobby Thomson. Stan Cullis said ‘Son, that was excellent’. Terry Wharton said he didn’t believe it. But I repeated it the next day – and over 8 pre-seasons I always won the race. And I also won a lot of the shorter races at Aldersley Stadium.
Unbeknown to Les Wilson, though, Stan Cullis was having problems.
“A month after my arrival in Wolverhampton, the General Manager Jack Howley called me in to tell me ‘Stan is away but believes strongly that we should sign you, however we will have to wait until he comes back to do this.’
“I never did meet up with Mr. Cullis until much later, when he was long gone from the club. On a never-to-be forgotten day, the Express and Star reporter Phil Morgan turned up at our digs to tell Peter Knowles that Mr. Cullis had been sacked.
“Peter would not have it – he loved the man. Meanwhile I am quietly thinking ‘that’s it, I’m done’.
Wilson (front row, second from right) with the Wolves Juniors side that lifted the Midland Intermediate League championship trophy in 1964-1965,
“A few days later, Jack Howley told another Canadian trialist, Barry Keating, that the club wasn’t going to offer him anything. I thought the worst, despite Knowles insisting that he knew that they would sign me. A few days after that, on the same day that they signed outstanding goalkeeper Phil Parkes as a full professional, they did the same for me. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents.
“Remember that in those days it was pay phone boxes and they didn’t always work! Mr. Howley told me that there was a signing on fee for me (because Vancouver New Westminster Royals didn’t expect a transfer fee), as well as the cost of my air ticket, accommodation and ground transportation. It was £1,400 in cash, which I was instructed to take straight to Lloyd’s Bank! In those days you could buy a house in Wolverhampton for £2,000. I considered myself very fortunate.
“My first basic pay packet was £14 a week. But money never ever came into it, throughout my career. I never moved for money, it wasn’t that which drove me.”
Les Wilson started his Molineux career in the club’s fourth team in the Worcestershire Combination, but was a regular component of the youth side that lifted the Midland Intermediate League championship trophy in 1964-1965, the season that the club lost its Division One footing for the first time in over 30 years. The young Wilson was coming on by leaps and bounds.
In Part 2, Bamforth examines the start of Les Wilson’s professional Wolves career.
